[Applause] [Music] [Applause] uh thank you Professor Woods for your very kind introduction we are living in an extraordinary time of History yesterday us held its presidential election and tomorrow China will hold its ating party Congress which will unveil China's new generation of leaders the Western media tends to present the two events as a sharp contrast between an opaque communist state beset with crisis and a transparent Dynamic liberal democracy behind this very superficial contrast is a widely held view that Western liberal democracy represents the ultimate best political system or in Professor fukuyama's words the end of
history and therefore China is viewed always as a kind of enlarged Belarus awaiting a color revolution in the transition towards liberal democracy short of that China will be hopeless but this school of thought thought is faced with a mindboggling question it's forever pessimistic forecast about China China's collapse turns to be always wrong and after three decades misplaced predictions about China it's time now to think outside the box to consider seriously the theme of our debate today Western liberal democracy would be wrong for China to my mind there are at least five reasons for this argument
first Common Sense with a population larger than the combin the populations of North America Europe Russia Japan and more with no tradition of liberal democracy whatsoever with a fresh memory of the devastating breakup of the Soviet Union Russia was only one ten of China in terms of population with long memory of upheavals throughout China's long and modern history and China's fear of upheavals is based on common sense indeed the country May well become ungovernable if it adopted Western political model China is not enlarge bellarus China is a civilizational State it's a size of roughly average
100 average European States it's a product of hundreds of States Amalgamated into one over its long history an inaccurate analogy would be something like the Asian Roman Empire continuing to this stay as unified modern state with a centralized government modern economy all its diverse traditions and cultures and huge population that all speak Latin to be frank this kind of state cannot afford one person one vote a multiparty system even the European Union of 27 cannot afford this kind of system if adopt this kind of model it will either become useless white elephant or end up
in disintegration second empirical evidence China actually experimented liberal democracy after it's 1911 Republic Revolution but this experiment turned out to be a devastating catastrophe the country immediately plunged into chaos and Civil Wars with hundreds of political parties juggling for power with Warlords fighting each other each supported by some foreign powers with a shatter the economy and millions of lives lost in the decades to come this kind of lesson is so sharp and so fresh in the memory of the Chinese today virtually Chinese often use the word L they afraid of L what does the L
mean Chinese it means chaos and uh third performance China has performed arguably better than most liberal democracies over the past three decades especially in domains of great concern to most Chinese people of course China has its share of problems some are very serious but China's overall success is beyond the doubt over the past three decades China performed better than all the developing countries combined in terms of eradicating poverty 70% of world's poverty will eradicate in China over the past 20 years China has performed better than all the transition economies combined because China's economy increase 18
fold in the matter of three decades compar with say Eastern Europe roughly one fold China has also performed better than many developed countries China has a large developed region roughly 300 million people the size of United States which today in many ways can compete with developed countries and the first TI cities like Shanghai in this developed region can and should be able to compete with London or New York Fourth the liberal democracy model itself is in deep trouble as soon in crisis of the crisis from deeply indebted America to distress Europe even with Obama's election
Victory today I don't see any solution to America's projected problems despite some of its known strengths liberal democracy as an institution has been seriously eroded by such prevailing problems such as short-termism single-minded populism the excessive influence of money especially in United States $ one vote and influence of special interests Abraham Lincoln's idea of government of the People by the people for the people is hardly achievable among liberal democracies otherwise Joseph sticket norble economics law would not have complained he said American Poli has become of the 1% by the 1% for the 1% this is why
even the advocate of the end of History professor fukuyama said not long ago in the financial times opad that United States democracy had little to teach China now Fifth and my last point the China model without much fanfare Beijing has actually introduced major reforms into its ways of political governance and established a very elaborate system of meritocracy which can be called selection plus election across the whole of China's political structure nothing can better illustrate this meritocracy system than the lineup of the next generation of Chinese political leaders to be unveiled in the coming days virtually
all the candidate members of China standing committee the highest decision body decision- making body of China have served twice at the number one of Chinese Province as you may know given the size of China each province is often four five of the average European States it's by no means it takes extraordinary talent and skill to govern a Chinese State you have to do it twice and perform well before you get ticket to enter into top leadership I said with this kind of meritocracy system in place as is the case now of course can be further
improved but we can already guarantee such leaders like George W bush or Japan's prime minister NOA will have no chance whatsoever to enter top level leadership it's way below the Chinese standards to be frank the China model is more about leadership while the liberal democracy model seems more about Showmanship China is now capable of planning for the Next Generation while the other model planning for next election or next 100 days China's meritocracy system indeed challenges this stereotypical dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy from the Chinese point of view the nature of a state including its legitimacy
has to be defined by its substance that is by good government with competent leaders and measured by what state can deliver and to what extent people are satisfied despite its deficiencies which could be many the Chinese po has ensured the world's fastest growing economy over three decades running and ensure the vast improved living standards for most Chinese as reviewed in the most recent PW survey PW Washington based research organization 82% Chinese feel optimistic about the future of their country indeed this Statistics is so good it's way ahead of all the Western liberal democracies Winston Church's
famous dicton democracy in the worst form of government except for those other forms that have been tried may be true in the western political culture many Chinese even paraphrase this phrase into what Chinese call shat or least bad option but in China's own political culture in confusion tradition of meritocracy a state should always strive for the best of the best solution and option it's by no means easy but you have to try even you meet half of this standards which is already admirable so at this moment China has succeeded in building up although it's not
not perfect yet this kind of meritocracy system will combine the best option of selecting well tested leaders and also introduced the least bad option to ensure the exess of bad leaders so Collective leadership through term very strict term limit age limit so I think this kind of meritocracy is really uh competitive it may win out in this Global competition of ideas and good governance and good democracy China has learned so much from the west and will continue to do so for its own benefit but it may be time now to use Den Zing's famous phrase
to emancipate the mind and learn a bit on the PA part of the West to learn bit more about China and even learn bit from the Chinese ideas and practices however strenuous they may appear for its own benefit in conclusion one man's medicine could be another man's poison and Western liberal democracy may be great or less great for the west but would be miserably wrong for a country like China thank you very much for your attention [Music] [Applause]
